There are some sinister actions going on in Auckland City Council. These actions are a very disturbing development in the ongoing campaign by councillor Glenda Fryer and her City Vision ticket to suppress free speech with their billboard banning proposals and an eerie fore-warning of what may come with the passing of the Electoral Finance Bill.

These photos are of a billboard and a mobile billboard that has been erected on a site on busy Dominion Road. It implores people to NOT vote for Glenda Fryer and the CutyVision ticket and calls them the "fun police". Note that it is impossible to discern the owner or the tenant of the building as you drive past this sign.

So what?, you say.

Well I received these photos anonymously, but from a mail server at Auckland City Council. I also was given information that if true shows that sinister forces are at play within the council.

Apparently the organisation that resides in the building that the sign is on is in receipt of funding from the Auckland City Council and apparently officers of the Council have contacted that organisation to request the sign be removed from the site or their funding could well be curtailed in the coming year.

Quite apart from the fact that the advertising company leases that space from the owner of the building this has very sinister implications that political pressure is being brought to bear within the council to use council officers to intimidate organisations to remove messages on or about premises that are contrary to someone elses view of the world.

It is frightening to think this is happening in Auckland let alone New Zealand and should be sending shivers up the spine of all Kiwi's that this is an indication of the future we face under the draconian Electoral Finance Bill.

The owners of the billboard space are clear in the picture, so I rang Gordon Frykberg at Oggi Billboards to ascertain if the rumours that I had received had any basis in fact. Gordon confirmed to me that discussions have taken place with Council Officers, his client, who owns the building and his client who paid for the sign. He believes that pressure is being unduly applied within council and says that this is clearly an attack on Freedom of Speech and all his client is trying to do is exercise his democratic rights to say who NOT to vote for.

It could also be construed as an attack on Freedom of Association.

I think there are serious concerns raised by my anonymous emailer, and after speaking with Gordon Frykberg serious neferious activities occuring within Auckland City Council and from their political masters.

Glenda Fryer and CityVision need to come clean on this issue and fast. There is no place for this sort of politically motivated control over Free Speech. It should be ringing alarm bells for any person supporting Free Speech and it should ring alarm bells for all of us that this is what we may see next year if the Electoral Finance Bill is passed.

Mayoral candidates seem to think breaking by-laws and electoral laws is just fine by them. Hubbard has been officially warned, why he isn't being prosecuted is beyond me, perhaps it is because the police are inept. Crow has brokenn two by-laws, first parking across three spaces and not putting anything in the meter for two days, secondly the stupid billboard by-laws. Actually good on him for breaching the stupid billboard by-laws.Â

In typical socialist fashion Glenda Fryer has been caught in a classic “Do as I say, not as I do” situation where she has been annoying her neighbours with her billboard for reelection in her front yard.

Glenda Fryer led the anti-billboard charge but of course now she has blotted the landscape with heaps of her reg and green City Vision hoardings.

This comment made to Dick Hubbard as he sat in on the Billboard submissions hearing says it all about the stupid lefty proposal to ban billboards.

[quote]"It is an abuse of the law-making process for the council to confiscate rights without compensation and or destroy the democratic right to express one's view on billboards whether it be commercial or non-commercial."[/quote]

Exactly, and what sort of compensation might the council be facing?

Owners of one apartment building get $100,000 a year through leasing to one of the biggest billboards in the central city.

Ouch!, that is a lot of moolah to essentially have confiscated for no compensation. Now magnafy that by the 346 sites around Auckland and you start to see the stupidity of this plan.